Article - FPS genre in a rut?

from Avault

http://www.avault.com/articles/getar...

While I'm no historian, I am reasonably certain the Nazis didn't build vast underground bunkers full of elevators and misshapen corridors with only one small door leading to the outside world. For a game like Medal of Honor, which worked so hard to bring realism to the FPS genre by using authentic weapons and sound effects, I find it troubling that developers would have us believe the Germans constructed buildings that were virtual death traps for the troops inside.

I think it's a pretty bad article, but I do agree that FPSes are mostly boring lately.

Same here Mex. There are a couple on the horizon that have me excited though. The thought of Doom 3, Thief 3, and Halo 2 really get my blood to singing!

Whilst a lot of FPS level design could do with a bit of an overhaul, time and cost and technology limit designers from say virtually modelling the pentagon and anyway in a FPS sometimes Linear design is a good thing.

I personally don''t want to spend forever wandering a huge empty level, this level problem was pretty evident in the GTA clone the Getaway, they modelled the center of London extremely well bur most of it was empty and after a while became extremly dull, if you don''t put lots of stuff in like GTA did big non linear levels can become as bad as a maze like level.

Cost is normally a big problem in designing levels. Also if you''re going to accurately model everything in a level like air vents, you may well inadvertantly put in a way to bypass a lot of the game. When I play a game I want to see most of it, which is why I replayed Deus Ex so much, to see how many ways I could do things.

I feel that to make level design more realistic will require a huge increase in spending on coding design and testing for every possibilty and that games (Especially Console titles) are expensive enough.

I guess it depends on what you want from an FPS these days... I''m mainly interested in Multi-player, I find that I can only sit still to play a single player FPS game for a pretty small window. I enjoy it a lot when I do play it but my attention starts to wonder after about 20 minutes on the best of games. Recently I sat down to try about some of the SOF2 single player game... I still have not made it past the first level, yet I enjoy the multi-player game a lot. Then take something like BF1942 that somehow manages to be revolutionary even though there is nothing all that new in any of the game play. Then there is the perpetually MMP style FPS like planetside coming out, who will there audience be if the world is truly tired of the FPS genera I wonder. I still don''t think people will really pay to play that sort of game past a small window, but even with enough churn and small group pf hardcore folks that could keep something going for a good long time. Some games like hit man 2 did what they could to make levels feel pretty open ended and reflect somewhat realistic architecture, Off hand I really think the reviewer fails to grock the complexity of that sort of architectural design, most of the folks doing level design are not Architects with 20 years of cad skills under their belts and having built and modeled hundreds of full commercial and residential buildings, and the level designers that are generally break the engines when they build maps.

I would like to see more interactivity. Kind of towards where nolf, deus ex and system shock are going(and of course duke nukem 3d). Devestation sounds like it might be a step in the right direction, but i havent checked out the demo yet. I want to be able to do more then just shoot people and open doors(and who could forget smashing crates).
I did have a big list of things i wanted, but basically if its one of those games up above i want it.
Mindless deathmatch is fun for a little bit, but throw in some strategy and tactics and im all over it.

"kegboy" wrote:

Whilst a lot of FPS level design could do with a bit of an overhaul, time and cost and technology limit designers from say virtually modelling the pentagon and anyway in a FPS sometimes Linear design is a good thing.

I personally don''t want to spend forever wandering a huge empty level, this level problem was pretty evident in the GTA clone the Getaway, they modelled the center of London extremely well bur most of it was empty and after a while became extremly dull, if you don''t put lots of stuff in like GTA did big non linear levels can become as bad as a maze like level.

I agree... the author makes it seem like just by simply mapping more realistic ""levels"" somehow FPS games become more innovative and ""fun"" What he should have asked himself was perhaps what made DeusEx ""fun"" was that it was linear in some ways but offered enough choices to appear to be nonlinear. A very difficult task to pull of if you think about it. One would shudder the sheer enormity of truely creating a level that was open enough to offer say >10 choices to the end result.. The enemy AI would have to be beyond any level of sophistication we have seen today since scripted events would be next to impossible. The AI would have to in effect create non-scripted events on the fly reacting to the players actions.

Then top that off with the amount of QA to ensure that such a level was as bug free as possible.

I dont think it would be that difficult.

Wing Commander had a branching tree storyline. This could be implemented in FPS and would work very nicely. However, it is much easier to place some ships in space for a ""level"" that is part of an alternate plotline. FPS alternate levels take quite a bit more time to construct before you can even place the enemies.

Doesnt mean it cant be done.

Matter of fact it has been done in the sim Mw4:Mercs so it wouldnt be too much of a stretch to do it in an FPS.

"fangblackbone" wrote:

I dont think it would be that difficult.

Wing Commander had a branching tree storyline. This could be implemented in FPS and would work very nicely. However, it is much easier to place some ships in space for a ""level"" that is part of an alternate plotline. FPS alternate levels take quite a bit more time to construct before you can even place the enemies.

Doesnt mean it cant be done.

Matter of fact it has been done in the sim Mw4:Mercs so it wouldnt be too much of a stretch to do it in an FPS.

I''m actualy allways disapointed that more games don''t take this tac rather then fail, die, redo *yawn*.